It's "promote, promote, promote" all the way. Cut up your activities into small, easy to handle chunks.

- First comes content (no point if you haven't any, is there? :-), optimizing your pages for the search engines, checking your HTML code, etc. - Next, submit to the engines. Sign up with link populartiy programs if your site qualifies. Find a selection here: < http://fantomaster.com/fasmbres01.html#linkpop > - Upgrade your site to an info hub by offering prime outgoing links - such as a search engine portal. This will help boost your site's ranking with the search engines. Contrary to popular opinion, linkage counts both ways, incoming and outgoing. Check out this free distributed search engine portal: < http://searchenginebase.com/ > The signup page is here: < http://searchenginebase.com/sbfreeportal0.html > - Participate in discussion forums. - Promote on Usenet via your sig file if you can answer (or ask) questions in areas your are either proficient or at least interested in. - Check your rankings regularly. - Also, your linkage. - Generate lots of fresh, useful content. Keep your blatant marketing activities on economy drive (pardon the pun), be subtle about your promotion. Far too little subtleness/subtlety around in these blaring, excitement driven times! People will notice, will favor: less dumb hysteria, more openness, honesty. Admit to mistakes if you make them (as you're bound to), but don't cringe, don't give the impression of reacting self-assertive or self-depreciating for the heck of it. (Everybody's tired of everybody's ego but their own ...) - Remember you are free to come and go as you please on the net. - Submit your new content. - Possibly resubmit your older content, depending on ranking and various other factors. (Introduce at least some minor changes before you do.) - Read, read, read - learn the trade from scratch. - Test out stuff - your mileage may vary immensely from the gurus' - every web site is different, or, at least, should be. - Link to lots of useful sites not directly competing with yours. - Request reciprocal links. - Create yet more, fresh content. - Submit it. - Contribute to mailing lists. - If you can, issue a newsletter of your own. Never mind if you only have yourself, your wife and your stepmother for subscribers - put it on site and submit it to the engines. (They simply love that sort of all-text stuff currently!) - Check your logs daily. - Learn how to recognize search engine spiders. - Don't go for cloaking unless you really know what you're doing. It's risky, but it *can* be highly effective, if you play it right. - Check ot all search engine generated hits to determine: a) your ranking, b) what people are actually searching for - you may be in for a surprise or two on that score. - Look at what your competitors are doing. Don't just copy them - BETTER them! - Create more domains and interlink them all.

About the author:
Ralph Tegtmeier is the co-founder and principal of fantomaster.com Ltd. (UK) and fantomaster.com GmbH (Belgium), < http://fantomaster.com/ > a company specializing in webmasters software development, industrial-strength cloaking and search engine positioning services. You can contact him at mailto:fneditor@fantomaster.com